SILVA, Denise Ferreira da

Denise Ferreira Da Silva is a critical race scholar whose work

emphasises the centrality of race to modern thought. An
interdisciplinary academic, she draws on philosophy, science,
political theory, feminist theory, globalization, law & human
rights, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, and cultural
studies.

In her book, ‘Toward A Global Idea of Race’, Silva critiques

how the racial has been framed and positioned in the history
of modern thought and challenges intellectual conventions by
addressing “the racial as a scientific construct” (2007:3).
For her, the creation of a Racial Other is foundational to the
present global power configurations and resulting geopolitical
issues, it allows for a supposed universalism where this Other
can never be included. The Racial Other is always lacking:
consciousness, subjectivity, self-determinacy, history. The
post-Enlightenment “I”, by contrast, denies its production
through the “violence, force, or power” of exclusion (2007:
23).

Denise Ferreira da Silva highlights the many means, including

the many bodies of theory, through which the illusion of this
universality without a relation to a Racial Other is
maintained. She also illustrates the ways in which the racial
continues to be produced as an Other, in theory and beyond.
For her, every space is permeated by raciality, and thus it
becomes important to address all of these spaces, from
philosophical habits to workplace discrimination. As she words
it:

“We need to trace every and each articulation of raciality,

including those that profess its irrelevance, trace at every
moment how it rewrites the racial subaltern subject in
affectability, producing statements that not only excuse the
violent effects of this rewriting but also deploy the
transparency thesis [subjectivity by denial of relation].”

While Denise Ferreira da Silva’s texts often seem impenetrable

to non-philosophers, she insists on a broad spectrum of
communication directed at different audiences. In fact, she
places great emphasis on not merely analysing the contemporary
condition, but also acting upon it. She demands of her readers
to engage her texts

“with critical strategies that will undermine the political or

symbolic arsenal – the tools of obliteration – that are
remapping the place of transparency by instituting global
regions and people that can be ‘rescued’ through deployment of
‘total violence’, recently named ‘enduring freedom’.”

In her own practice, Silva participates in alternative

academic, artist and writers collectives such as Living
Commons that experiment with reorienting and restructuring
knowledge making practices, including alternative forms of
performing knowledge and distribution.

Essential Reading
Silva, D. Ferreira da (2007) Toward a global idea of race.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Silva, D. Ferreira da (2003/2014) Notes towards the end of
time. Living Commons 1(2).

Further Reading
Silva, D. Ferreira da (2016) Fractal Thinking. Accessions No.
2
Silva, D. Ferreira da (2015) Hacking the black subject: Black
Feminism, Refusal, and the Limits of Critique. Presented at
Barnard College, 22 October 2015.
Chakravartty, P, Silva, D. Ferreira da (2013) Race, empire,
and the crisis of the subprime. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns
Hopkins University Press.

Questions
How does post-Enlightenment thinking construct universality
according to Denise Ferreira da Silva? How does it engage with
‘race’?
Why does Denise Ferreira da Silva believe that “the racial is
the single most important ethico-juridical concept in the
global present” (2016)?
What are Denise Ferreira da Silva’s methods for communicating
her ideas and why do you think she chooses to communicate in
these ways?

Submitted by Angela Last